Theman who said that was in a rural hamlet in the mountains of New York state, and Sue Halpern had just been dragooned by the town board to set up a lending library with a total of $15,000. About a year on, after tremendous success, Halpern decided she agreed: “A public library is predicated on an ethos of sharing and egalitarianism. … It is defiantly, proudly, communal.” – The New York Review of Books